Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Abbott government's betrayal on the promise to match Labor and to deliver the Gonski reform program is having a profound impact across my electorate. A core principle of Gonski prevented states from ripping their money out of schools. Mr Abbott has allowed Premier Barnett to rip $103 million from the education budget in 2013-14. Every government school in Western Australia is now worse off. Lockridge Senior High School is a low-SEI school trying to address entrenched literacy and numeracy problems with specialist literacy and numeracy support programs. They had to cut these programs from three days to two days and finally scrap them altogether. These programs had been delivering and had seen them lift their NAPLAN results. All this has now gone. Additional time with a psychologist, which was available for low-SEI schools, has been scrapped. In an area with a significant Indigenous population, funding for Indigenous programs and support staff is also gone. So much for closing the gap! Premier Barnett cut $168,000 to Lockridge Senior High School in 2014 and there is more to come next year—and, in this, Mr Abbott is his accomplice. (Time expired)